St Pete (2 of 2) - The St Petersburgh Extraction External Views

Jonathan Harms and his wife Amanda were enjoying breakfast in bed as usual when suddenly Eddy, one of the bodyguards, rushed into the bedroom.

"Boss, you won't believe this, but we are surrounded by an interdiction field!" Eddy said with a mild tone of panic.

Amanda, sitting naked in her bed as usual, raised an eyebrow. No servant except for Anita the maid was allowed to enter the bedroom when she was still inside. And even she of course had to knock and lower her eyes. In her early days a lot of men had seen her naked, but now she was the wife of Jonathan Harms, a relation that granted some privileges.

Eddy's behavior irked both Amanda and Jonathan. However, Jonathan quickly understood the urgency of the message. "Eddy, next time you knock or I'll have to shoot you," he said. "Now what's this about an interdiction field surrounding us?"

Eddy's face visibly lost some of his natural southern color. "Boss, it's true. An interdiction field surrounds our plot on all four sides. We also lost all our communications. Telephone, both conventional and mobile, radio, internet, even TV. Walkie-talkie works within the plot but that's all.

Jonathan got up and opened the light curtain of one of the windows. "Impressive. I've never seen one of these for real." He turned around and quickly put on a pair of shorts and a dressing gown. "Sorry my love, I have to go downstairs before one of my men starts something foolish."

"You are forgiven," Amanda replied with a thin smile. "Please send in Anita while you leave."

Jonathan left the bedroom on the second floor of the mansion with Eddy following him. A nervous Anita was already waiting outside the door. Downstairs, Jonathan found several of his men in front of the control room where two men were constantly observing all the security cams of the estate and were also managing the communication with the outside world. The men grew silent when Jonathan arrived.

"Any signs of intruders? Maybe drones?" Jonathan asked the operators.

"No boss, nothing. The field showed up five minutes ago. We checked communications and then sent Eddy to inform you."

Jonathan tried to figure what was going on. The security system of his headquarter was a very advanced one. It not only used cameras that were able to operate with infrared light. It also used radar and sonic sensors to detect intruders, including drones. The system had proved more than once that it even was able to detect Confederacy drones. So if Curtis, the operator said that there was nothing, then there was nothing.

Suddenly Jonathan turned around, facing his men. "Gentlemen, this is the time of truth. Who of you was not informed by the Confederacy AI on your CAP test that you are excluded from leaving Earth because of your criminal behavior?"

There was an uneasy murmur among his men. One of them, Jonny the Mouth, replied, "Boss, you once said that you will never ask about a CAP test result, as long as we got tested. You even forbid talking about it among ourselves."

"You are right about that, but this is a different situation. I think this is a Confederacy extraction and we are on the outside," Jonathan said.

"What did you just say?" Amanda asked from the staircase over the growing noise of the surprised men. The men went silent again.

"This is an extraction, my dear. There are no FBI agents, no Confederacy Marines, not even drones. The only reason for this is that we are excluded. I already expected this. What I didn't expect is that there would be an extraction all around us," Jonathan explained. "This brings me to my previous question again. Who is not classified a criminal by the Confederacy? You know that I hope that my daughters make it into an extraction. I'm willing to let everybody go who might have a chance in an extraction. We'll see if we can get someone through these force fields. If you aren't able to leave Earth, I expect you return here with some excellent insight information of a real extraction."

Slowly, Anita, who was standing on the stairs behind Amanda, was raising her hand.

"Ah that's one," Jonathan said with a smile. "Anybody else?"

Another two people raised their hands. One was Kenny the courier boy, the other one was Curtis, one of the security operators. The other five men looked a little unsure at each other.

Jonathan raised an eyebrow. "Curtis, you are surprising me," he noted.

"I was surprised myself when I just got my CAP card at the test center without any comment. I had heard from Earl about the notification of the AI, and that he was a little scared that the Confederacy might inform the FBI or the local police. Maybe I'm just a good, loyal mercenary. However, I'm not leaving. I don't see me wearing a banana skirt, playing the human dildo for a sponsor," Curtis stated.

They all laughed about that image.

"Boss, I have more bad news for you," Curtis continued. "Your daughters left early this morning with Miles. They went for a test run of their ark. If the interdiction field doesn't include a good part of the gulf, they are not inside."

"Shit!" was all Jonathan said. Everybody understood that he was really pissed.

Farnham Mayhurst was forty-two years old and a trained mercenary, but he had seen better days. With the United States drawing back from almost every hot spot in the third world after Average Joe's and the president's speech, the mercenary business had become more dangerous and less profitable. Three years ago, Farnham accepted the job offer from Mr. Harms, knowing that he was a local criminal. Without Curtis, an old friend from better days, he would have turned down the offer.

Farnham was not only one of four bodyguards for the Harms' daughters. He also had to teach them the legal way of life as well as possible. Farnham's respect for Mr. Harms had raised a lot when he finally got his job description.

Farnham had just returned home from his night shift at the Harms mansion. The sisters had been visiting a student's birthday party. There hadn't been anything excessive, so he had an easy job. They had returned to the Harms' mansion at two o'clock in the morning. Farnham had spent the rest of the night playing poker with some of the other men working for Mr. Harms. At six o'clock, Miles, another of the sisters' bodyguards, took over his shift early, since the sisters wanted to join a test run of their ark. Farnham didn't know where the young women were getting all that energy. He was definitely spent.

The usual routine after a night shift for Farnham was eating a light meal and drinking a glass of good single malt whiskey while listening to the morning TV show and watching the people on the street. The next step would have been to go to bed, but the routine was interrupted. The TV program changed and a new voice announced, "This is a Confederacy extraction. Please stay calm and leave the buildings. We have the whole day for this event."

Farnham hurried to the window and looked along the street. There were interdiction fields at both crossings he could see. The people on the street looked confused and unsure what to do. When Farnham just drew back, he noticed his neighbors across the street were active. Since the day he had moved in, they had annoyed him with their Earth First propaganda bullshit. His sixth sense tingled. If they were more than just loud-mouthed, there would soon be trouble approaching.

Farnham waited no longer. His little apartment offered a perfect view on the other house's entrance. Farnham pushed the refrigerator out of the way and opened the secret weapon locker where he stored his treasures. This day would see his Bohica Arms FAR-50 in action. It was a little overpowered for this distance but Farnham didn't care. He moved the table and a chair to a comfortable position in the middle of the room, loaded the rifle and waited.

People started to follow the Confederacy's orders and filled the street. Only five minutes later, two men left the building across the street, carrying a MAC-11 machine pistol in each hand and a lot of magazines in their belts. The first man dropped to the floor dead, with a big hole between his eyes and his brain sprayed all over the entry. The second one was shocked, which gave Farnham the time to reload. When the second man turned around and lifted his hand to blindly fire at the people in the street, Farnham pulled the trigger for the second time. The man was dead before he could hurt anybody.

Farnham was satisfied and relaxed a little. He didn't notice the tiny drone that appeared in the corner of the window until he was stunned by the stinger the drone was carrying.

The flat roof of depot number 4 had become very popular for those soldiers that were currently not on duty at MacDill Airforce Base, Tampa, Florida. It was one of the spots where people with binoculars could easily watch the other side of the bay where St. Petersburg was located. At nine o'clock, the whole town had vanished behind an interdiction field. Although they weren't able to see anything except for the interdiction field, the crowd had grown up to two-hundred men before eleven o'clock. Most of them had relatives on the other side of the bay.

The interdiction field had appeared in front of Maggie May when she just was leaving the parking lot in front of her parent's house. She was still living with her father although it was considered uncool by all her friends and co-workers. Maggie had graduated a year ago. She was now working as a secretary at the local radio station, which meant she had to handle just anything that her bosses tossed at her. Sometimes it was annoying, but sometimes it was just cool. Today her job would have been to welcome Tom Jones at the airport and entertain him for two hours. At noon there would have been a live broadcast with the audience asking questions to him at the studio. She wasn't sure if she should laugh or cry.

Maggie left her car and looked around. She spotted the Confederacy Marines who had started to organize the extraction, so she was obviously within the area. The house was within the area too, so she re-entered it. She knew that Andrew, her dad, was at home and this was definitely the last chance to convince him to leave Earth, maybe as her concubine. The thought alone made her wet her pants. Her mother Connie had died long ago and so her dad had been the most important person in her life. He had given her a hard time during her university time and forced her to learn just everything she could. It had started after Average Joes' and the president's speech.

A few days after the president made it public that an alien invasion force was on the way towards Earth and that the Darjee, another alien race, was trying to help, her father and Maggie had visited a CAP test center. Maggie had reached a CAP score of 6.3 but her father had been very angry when he had shown her his card with a 4.8 printed on it in big digits. However, after a week he started to tease her that she could reach sponsor level instead of leaving Earth as a sex toy. He forced her to visit more lessons than before at the university and he introduced her to various martial arts teachers. The last thing she really didn't like in the beginning. Those teachers weren't really the type of men she wanted to come across in a dark alley. Her dad insisted that she at least trained with each of them for a month before she was allowed to drop it. The first time she understood that this training was useful was at a student party when a drunk fellow student tried to rape her. He wasn't really happy with the result, since Maggie crushed his testicles with her knee and almost drowned him in the strawberry punch bowl. She then searched a martial arts studio on her own to learn Kung Fu instead of the street fighting styles of her dad's friends.

Two years later she managed to reach 6.6 in another CAP test at her birthday.

While Maggie knew that her dad's friends weren't all that trustworthy, she ignored every sign of a criminal career on him. He was her dad and that was all that mattered. In her dreams, a lover had to be like him; One-hundred and seventy centimeters high, a lot of muscles and dark brown hair, including a lot of chest hair and a raspy three-day beard.

"Dad?" Maggie shouted from the entrance door. She found him in the kitchen, drinking coffee.

"What's up dear? Why aren't you out there searching for two concubines and leave the planet?" Andrew asked.

"I'm doing just that. I want you to leave with me."

Andrew laughed. "I didn't tell you that this is not possible? I can't leave Earth."

"Not even for me?" Maggie teased him. "I love you, dad, and in my wet dreams it is you, not one of my fellow students or co-workers who is pleasing me. I know that for the Confederacy it's no problem that you are my dad."

Andrew sighed. "No, that's not the problem. It had been a hard time to stay away from you, once you grew into a beautiful woman," he noted, observing her from tip to toe. "Okay. Let's go to one of those Marines. Maybe you will believe him that I can't leave the planet."

They left the house and approached a Marine who was busy explaining the rules to a growing group of people. Andrew expected that they would never appear alone, so there had to be several more of them. He was right. He approached one standing in the shadows at the side of a building, guarding a silver disk that was lying on the ground.

"Excuse me, sir, would you please explain to my daughter why I won't leave Earth?" Andrew was showing his CAP ID to the Marine.

The Marine looked a little dumbfounded at first but, after a few seconds where he seemed to listen to someone else, he nodded and turned toward Maggie. "Are you aware that there are several groups of persons that the Darjee won't accept in space, like politicians, clerics and criminals? Your father Andrew May counts toward the last group. He was informed about this at his CAP test and that he should stay out of our way."

Maggie was nearly crying. "You can't do this to him! He's always been a good dad."

Andrew dragged her away from the Marine. "Listen Maggie, I knew this all the time. I am a thief and a fraud and I never tried to learn something useful; well, nothing useful for a legal living. I was good enough to never get caught by the police, although they came close several times. The only thing I did right was preparing you for a better life. So move your pretty ass and leave this place. This is your big chance."

Maggie cleared her tears and looked at her father. "If you can't leave, I won't leave either."

"Bad idea," Andrew replied. The words of Maggie made him angry. "Did I really raise a stupid cow? Because that's all you will be, once the Sa'arm arrive. A cow that adds to their food supply."

The words struck Maggie and she ran away crying. Her dad had never talked to her like this.

The Marine who had watched the scene from the distance approached Andrew. "It's hard to send your kid away, isn't it?"

"What do you know?" Andrew barked.

"I may look like a twenty-year-old, but I am really fifty-two." Andrew looked at the Marine in surprise. "It was hard every time one of my three children left to build their own lives. I also had a son that I had to throw out of the house. Otherwise he never would have learned to stand on his own feet."

"Well, yeah, she's my only daughter. I hope she will do better than her old man," Andrew mused.

"If you had the chance to leave Earth as your daughter's concubine, would you do it?" the Marine asked.

"That wouldn't work for long. I always have been dominant. I don't hold back and I don't hesitate to use brute force. I just hurt my daughter badly, although not physically, to make her do the right thing. I heard stories about a concubine's life. Sooner or later I would hurt somebody. I expect it's true that concubines are killed for hurting other people? I heard it from different sources."

"You are probably right," the Marine said. He returned to his post a few meters away.

L'ielit was working her way through the list of special cases that an extraction leader had to decide. She already regretted that she hadn't delegated this to sub-leaders. An extraction this size was pure stress with a lot of special cases.

At noon L'ielit managed to complete the list. The last case with the lowest priority was a call from one of the isolated areas. She was surprised to hear something of them at all, since those isolated quadrants were the headquarters of local gangs and mobsters with an extremely high number of people marked 'permanently excluded from extractions'.

"Tell me something about this call," L'ielit demanded.

<It's the mansion of a local crime boss, Jonathan Harms. They try to call the Confederacy for three hours now. They ask for permission to get two people through the interdiction field. I checked the names and they are not marked. One is Anita Flores. She is working as a maid in the mansion. The other is Kenny Smith. According to some police reports, he is just a courier.>

"Harms. Wasn't there another case with this name involved?"

<Indeed. The two daughters of Jonathan Harms were part of a pre-pack, but they were outside of the interdiction field. You authorized to send a pick-up team to them.>

"Oh yes, now I remember. The ark. Do you see any problems with this?" L'ielit asked.

<Technically there is no problem,> the AI answered. <We can simply call them to approach the interdiction field and raise another one behind them. A drone can check them for weapons. If they are clean, we open the interdiction field for them. It is a political decision if we allow this or not.>

L'ielit thought for a second. "Tell them that those two can leave the area. If they come up with any last minute conditions we'll cancel the thing and ignore them for the rest of the extraction. If they behave well, you can transmit a note that the Harms daughters are safe."

<Confirmed.>

Curtis jumped when suddenly the voice of the Confederacy AI answered his call. He had tried to reach the Confederacy for the last three hours using every available channel without any sign that they were even listening. He listened to the instructions of the AI, and then he left the observation room and called for Anita and Kenny.

"Listen you two, this is your chance. Go to the main entrance and stand directly in front of the interdiction field. They'll let you through. I suggest leaving your clothing here. You won't need it in an extraction, I assume."

Anita shyly smiled while she stripped in front of Curtis and several of the other men, who were enjoying this little show. Then the two young people left the house.

Two minutes later they were gone. The Confederacy had simply relocated the wall. Curtis returned to the observation room. Actually he had nothing to do, but it was his shift and he felt more comfortable with the computers than with the other men.

A minute later he received another call from the AI. Fortunately he recorded it. Curtis called for his boss over the in-house communication. "Sir, we got a message from the Confederacy you might be interested in," Curtis said. Then he replayed the message.

Jonathan Harms hugged his wife with tearing eyes. "They made it. They really made it."

Farnham Mayhurst woke up with an ugly headache. He was lying in an upholstered chair with a high back and the position was comfortable. The room was completely gray and sparse. There was nothing except for a table and another chair that was more normal than the one he was sitting on. When he started to seriously wonder where he was, a door opened that he hadn't spotted before. Three Confederacy Marines entered the room. Farnham recognized the uniforms and the insignia of a lieutenant, a sergeant and a private first class.

The lieutenant took the seat on the other side of the table while the two others guarded the door that was again almost invisible, even though Farnham now knew where to look for it. "Nice to see you healthy again, Mr. Mayhurst. My name is Lieutenant Gardener," the lieutenant said.

"Yeah, thanks for the headache," Farnham grunted. He didn't know what to expect. He figured he was in orbit now or some other Confederacy base. He had used a deadly weapon in an extraction, although he didn't shoot at Confederacy people.

<Honest sarcastic answer. He is unsure what to expect,> the AI informed Lieutenant Gardener over his implanted communication link. The chair Farnham Mayhurst was sitting in was plastered with sensors that made it a very sophisticated lie detector.

"Mr. Mayhurst, we have checked your background and I think I have to apologize. We first thought you were one of those Earth First terrorists and we were under pressure, so we shot you down. Now I learned that you have a CAP score of 6.0 with a few impressive sub-scores. What did you think when you realized that you were caught in an extraction?"

"I just wanted to go to bed. Nightshifts are draining," Farnham replied.

<Honest answer,> the AI noted quietly.

"Ah yes, you work for Mr. Harms, a local crime boss," the lieutenant said.

"Yeah, a criminal. Dirty money. But the job is a good one. Dirty money for a clean job." Farnham tried to figure where this was leading.

<He's partly disgusted by what Mr. Harms is doing, but he likes his job.>

"What do you think about Earth First?"

"Idiots."

<Honest answer.>

The lieutenant grinned. "Could you explain a little further?"

"They are ruining the chances to flee for others," Farnham answered. "Their initial demand was comprehensible. However, it is just stupid to evacuate nobody just because it's technically impossible to evacuate more than ten or twenty percent."

<Honest answer.>

The lieutenant nodded. "Why did you hide your weapons behind the refrigerator?"

"Now don't play stupid," Farnham replied. "Even with the lax weapon laws of Florida, some of my weapons are illegal. In addition it would be very bad if a thief would find them. The area I live in isn't really safe."

<Honest answer. He doesn't really care that it is illegal. He just doesn't want to get caught. He would be very upset if someone steals his weapon collection. He might hunt the thieves down to get them back.>

"We noticed. Your neighbors had machine pistols."

"And I made sure they weren't able to use them. So am I in trouble for that?" Farnham asked.

<Honest answer. I calculate that he doesn't believe that the Confederacy is sharing intelligence with the FBI.>

"We would have stunned them, as we did stun you," the lieutenant replied. His relaxed tone had gone.

"I had time to sip from my whiskey again after shooting those two idiots, for heaven's sake, and you want to make me believe that your men were near enough to prevent casualties among the people in the street? Don't make me laugh."

<He is right, and he knows it,> the AI noted.

"Well, WE are not laughing. It would have been nice to question these men to get some more names of Earth First activists. However, you are free to go. Private, lead the man to the transporter room."

Farnham quickly closed his mouth. He didn't want to anger the lieutenant more than necessary. So he stood up and followed the private out.

"How many left?" Lieutenant Gardener asked when the man was gone.

<Only five more to go. They are most probably real Earth First terrorists,> the AI replied.

Lieutenant Gardener sighed.